Drafting Players

The draft, without a doubt, is the most important part of any fantasy league that follows a team format. Here is where the league truly begins, where your team is selected and where your future is determined. This will give you an idea of how the draft process goes.

In the real world, a number one pick in the draft is a great thing. The same goes for fantasy sports. The league randomly selects one member to get the first pick and it also determines the rest of the draft order. The first pick gets you the consensus best player, like Eli Manning was in the 2004 NFL Draft (below).

Once the draft begins, each owner makes a selection of a player to fill out his or her roster. The league sets an amount of time- usually no more than two minutes- for each owner to make a player selection. Once the selection is made, the next owner in line gets to choose which player to select. This process continues until all rosters have been filled with a predetermined number of players set by the league.

The goal of a fantasy draft is to create the best team possible. But it is more complicated than it sounds. One needs to consider that certain positions must be filled to have a legal team, that some players will perform better or worse than they are supposed to, that only certain statistics are earning points and that every other owner wants the best team as well.

After the draft, the owners' teams are anything but settled. Action moves quickly as owners attempt to trade players with each other, pick up players not drafted or pick up players that other owners have dropped. Trades and pickups are vital to any owner's fantasy success, but knowing when to trade and who to pick up is the problem. If an owner is inactive in the league, there is practically no chance that owner can win it.

A fantasy owner's work is never done.

Read on to get a look at some of the terminology that might be used in your draft room.